The Daredevil and Question sprites are in honor of two comic book greats we lost in 2018: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

My plan to have more videos didn’t work out the way I’d hoped (though the really short Black Panther video turned out nicely), but I’ve put together a video with some unfinished work, including something I’ve shown teasers for in TWO year-end videos.

That third part of the video is a big reason why there weren’t that many new sprites added to the site this year. I spent a bit of 2018 working on animations you haven’t seen yet and, let’s be real, if I show them on this site before I put them in a video, they’ll be in someone else’s video before mine (with no credit). Not that I’m bitter or anything. Truth is, getting ripped off is part of what inspires me to want to make videos. Let’s see if 2019 is the year that I finally start finishing some videos!

Public plans for 2019:

Animation (and showing it this time) and video. I didn’t show everything in that Unfinished Business video, so some long-percolating animation and video projects will show up in 2019.

The Revenge of 1989: 30th anniversary edition!

Bring back the missing Crossup Beatdown

More prints, including the upcoming custom print program where you get to pick what goes into a one-of-a-kind print. Imagine being able to choose who’s in the 2018 Horror Fighter print, including a customized roster.

More info on that next year!

That’s enough of all for 2018! Thank you for coming through to check out the site and I hope you have a Happy New Year!

The only April Fool’s trick involving the site happened to me yesterday when I thought I’d spend the whole time making 8-bit style sprites. HA! You’ll read about that in a bit.

GFX Generators – The oft-neglected Fake Screenshot generator (with 8-bit graphics) gets some love today. I spent much of yesterday untangling a bug in the engine that messed up font selections on a few screens (esp. the Mega Man boss intros). I also added sprites to:

Sorry, but I’m a bit low on time here. I’ll be back later to add them to the sprite galleries (and possibly throw in a new sprite). The new River City Ransom NES sprites are now in the gallery. The others aren’t because… I don’t know what style they are, really. They were supposed to be like Mega Man doctors (Wily and Light), but don’t. I’ll figure it out later.

Be sure to check out the news in last week’s update post if you haven’t been here for a while, as it includes new fighting-scale sprites and a preview of an upcoming pixel art print!

The Karnov/Bad Dudes update from a few days ago wasn’t all I had for show and tell for this week. Shamelessly timed with their live-action premieres this week, it’s time for visits from the Justice League and the Punisher!

Shameless plug reminder: I’ve got a Justice League pixel art print with the old-school line-up in the ScrollBoss Shop

pixelart Justice League – v.1 (10×8 & 11×14 inches)

Heads-up:

Zvitor’s “Justice League United” OpenBoR game hit last week and is available at zvitor.com (of course). I played through it, but don’t expect me to spoil anything for you! Here’s Zvitor’s promo vid for it:

River City Ransom: Underground is on sale for $9.99 on Steam until November 20th, 2017! I’ve been disappointed by a lot of video game comebacks, but I’ll never pass up a chance to praise RCR:U. There’s a character for just about every play style and has the depth of a one-on-one fighting game. If you need a story as an excuse to have a good time, don’t worry, there’s a story in there, too. If that isn’t enough for you, they’re getting ready to make the game moddable. It’s easily one of the best beat ’em ups to hit the streets in years and well worth a buy.

Not all the new things this week are bleak or hostile. This Wednesday was the debut of Tiny Bird Garden, a mobile game by Super Retro Duck that lets you befriend the cutest crew of birds you’ll ever meet. If that sounds fun to you, check out the game’s site and give the game some love!

What started as a Marvel vs. Capcom-themed update turned into a free-for-all crossover, causing me to add more updates with Tekken on Wednesday and SNK on Thursday. It ends tonight with Mortal Kombat and DC Comics facing off again!

And since I said tonight’s the night, that’s all for these crossover, I – – hold up, wait a minute… I can feel it now. A week of having whole universes invading my updates have sharpened my senses a little. Here comes – –

Ha! Saw you comin’ this time! It’s the last night for this theme, so just step on out now.

Oh, snap, Duke must’ve heard there was a Street Fighter crossover and wanted in again after the Street Fighter x G.I.JOE series. Rash and Zitz from Battletoads seem to be hungry for crossovers again, too, after Rash got a taste of Killer Instinct. Okay, you’re in, too. Here’s all the update details:

All newness has been added to the main GFX Generator, where you can make your own fake screenshots, too!

Unfortunately, I can’t fit all of these names into the post title. Seeing as how this won’t be the last time this crap happens, it’s going to need a name.

Crossup Beatdown. That’ll work. From this day forward, any time this sort of crossover madness happens on this site (and it will), that’s the name I’ll use. This edition of Crossup Beatdown is over, but beware, because you never know when it’ll happen again. However, if you checked out every update as they happened, your multi-universal senses may have sharped a bit, as have mine. We’re one with many cosmoses now, and that’s a pretty cool deal if you think about it.

Today would’ve been the 100th birthday of the late, great King of Comics, Jack Kirby, and this update is filled with characters that he co-created (alongside Joe Simon or Stan Lee) or created himself. I’ve based sprites on his poses over the years because he was able to breathe a fully dynamic sense of life into his characters that they almost seemed to move on the page. In a Jack Kirby comic, every run was a breakneck dash, every punch was a haymaker and even the taunts seemed dangerous. He turned every attribute up to ten (or beyond) in the same way that fighting game sprite artists did years later. We comic fans owe him a lot and this update is in his honor. With this being the 100th birthday, I felt that I had to do more than usual, so I hope you enjoy this tribute to his work.

All these sprites, along with some new mini-logos, have been added to the main GFX image Generator, where I made the fake screenshots at the top of this post. I also completely remade all the Marvel face portraits for the Mego card tribute in the main image generator, even the characters who already had Capcom sprites.

edit: after a bit of rest, I’ve added the mini-logos to their galleries. Marvel gets Ant-Man, Medusa, MODOK and two for the Silver Surfer. DC gets Big Barda, Granny Goodness, Orion, and OMAC.

The 8th month is in its 9th day, and that’s the day this site pays tribute to a year unlike any other year: 1989. That year was so packed that I dedicated a small section of the site to it in 2009, the 20th anniversary of so many of this site’s favorite games that I just put it all in one update. In 2014, the 25th anniversary, I spent nearly the whole year doing updates with nothing but 1989-related content, because doing updates filled with Final Fight, the Revenge of Shinobi, Strider, Golden Axe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles kinda just looked like regular site updates here anyway. Now it’s a yearly thing here, where even non-game items from 1989 get in on the fun. Now we’ve got the info dump out of the way, let’s get on to what’s new to the site today!

Here’s a couple of reminders about recent games that just happen to be linked to 1989:

River City Ransom: Underground from Conatus Creative Inc., a revival of Technos’ English localization of Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari (1989), plays more like something fans like myself hope and dream for than something we’d actually get. It expands everything, from the combat system stats and storyline all the way down to lovingly crafted item descriptions., but adds enough of its own spark to make it feel fresh. Yes, it’s tough in the beginning, but so was the original River City Ransom when I played it, so their changing things up a bit actually makes it feel more like the first time of playing the old RCR than the hundredth. That’s not an easy magic trick to pull, but the crew at Conatus did it.

You’ve probably at least heard someone mention Fire Pro Wrestling World recently. and there’s a lot of reasons for it. Picking up where FPW Returns for PS2 (which I also own) left off means that it’s already deeper than any wrestling game you’ll find on the market now, even though it’s only in Early Access. It’s not your average wrestling game and takes a while to adjust to the timing-based play style, but search the internet and you’ll find enough info to help you get into the game. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to know what kind of Edit Wrestlers I’ve made for it so far (nothing good enough to upload yet).

That wraps up this year’s Revenge of 1989. I know I didn’t get around to a lot of games (I’ve still got a few sketches that I didn’t have a chance to turn into sprites yet), so I apologize for any of your favorite games being left out. Maybe I’ll get to some of those others (like Alpha Denshi’s Gang Wars) next year.

All of those sprites have been added to the GFX Generators, where you can make a graphics like the one at the top of this post.

Also, the person who commissioned me to make some sprites that’d fit in with Konami’s TMNT arcade style gave me permission to add those sprites to the TMNT gallery. If you’re a fan of the 80s toyline and cartoon, I hope you’ll like those surprises.

I was too busy for Wonder Woman Day a while back, so I’m making up for it today. Wonder Woman’s character slot in the GFX Generators now has a new mini-logo (early 90s version) and a new portrait made from a picture that I haven’t finished inking yet. I know I usually use (and credit) preexisting art for the MSH and CotA portraits, but They’re available as part of her character in the main GFX Generator and the separate MSH Vs. and X-Men: CotA Vs. generators.

Beating River City Ransom: Underground this week kept me in the mood for spriting more characters in the original NES game’s style. I’m still trying to find a balance between sticking in that original game’s look and trying more unique things like RCR:U did. Today’s batch features do-overs for sprites I’d edited from RCR sprites years ago (the Lee Bros. and some Street Fighter stalwarts), other teenage characters (including five with attitude), a few clownish characters (including my own character, Nutroll) and one man who will pity these fools.

also, one character that I thought I’d done for the Megaman NES style finally gets his turn: